A little insight from Derek Reveron, October 01, 2008


Today marks the birth of the U.S. Africa Command, “the culmination of a 10-year thought process within the Department of Defense (DoD) acknowledging the emerging strategic importance of Africa...

Those looking for big, bold initiatives from AFRICOM will likely be disappointed. As Nick Gvosdev noted in an earlier New Atlanticist post, the command won’t be funded at expected levels. As is painfully obvious, the lion’s share of our military resources are being devoted to Iraq and Afghanistan, so there should be no worries about American forces flowing into Africa for good or ill purpose. Instead, AFRICOM will be an economy of force effort.